Follow the author of this article

Follow the topics within this article

This article was originally published in The Telegraph on June 16 2001, before he committed suicide in 2004

To the casual eye they are simply two former northern mill towns, each fiercely proud of its traditions, the pair of them separated by a county border and just 20 miles of moorland. Yet Todmorden and Hyde are something much more. For over a period of a quarter of a century they became, in succession, the killing fields of Harold Shipman, Britain's most prolific serial killer.